Very low spending on public healthcare, weak social safety nets, and poor labor rights meant the majority of the world’s countries were woefully ill-equipped to deal with COVID-19, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI).
The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII) shows that only 26 out of 158 countries were spending a recommended 15 percent of their budgets on health prior to the pandemic, and in 103 countries at least one in three workers lacked basic labor rights and protections, like sick pay, when the virus struck.
The index ranks 158 governments on their policies on public services, tax, and workers’ rights, three areas pivotal to reducing inequality and weathering the COVID-19 storm. It is being launched ahead of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) virtual Annual Meetings next week.
“Governments’ catastrophic failure to tackle inequality meant the majority of the world’s countries were critically ill-equipped to weather the pandemic,” Chema Vera, Oxfam International’s interim executive director, said. “No country on earth was trying hard enough to reduce inequality and ordinary people are bearing the brunt of this crisis as a result. Millions of people have been pushed into poverty and hunger and there have been countless unnecessary deaths.”
The index highlights that no country in the world was doing enough to tackle inequality prior to the pandemic and while COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for some, many countries are still failing to act. This is helping to fuel the crisis and has increased the vulnerability of people living in poverty, especially women. For example:
- The United States ranks last out of the wealthy G7 countries and trails 17 low-income countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia on labor legislation due to anti-union policies and a very low minimum wage.
- Nigeria, Bahrain and India, which is currently experiencing the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of COVID-19, were among the world’s worst-performing countries in tackling inequality going into the pandemic.
- Kenya, which had ranked highly (9th) on progressive tax policies, has responded to the crisis with tax cuts for the wealthiest and big business and negligible additional funding for social protection and health measures. Nearly two million Kenyans have lost their job and tens of thousands of people living in Nairobi’s slums and in the countryside have received almost no help from the government and are struggling to feed themselves.
- In Colombia, which ranks 94 out of 158 countries on labor rights, 22 million informal workers don’t have sick pay and have been forced to work to feed their families ―even if ill with COVID-19.
- Togo and Namibia, which were already taking strides to tackle inequality before the pandemic, have provided monthly cash grants to informal workers who lost their jobs because of lockdown measures.
- Ukraine, which has one of the lowest rates of inequality in the world despite its relatively low GDP, has increased frontline healthcare workers’ pay by up to 300 percent.
- Since the pandemic, Bangladesh, which ranks at just 113 on the index, has stepped up by spending $11 million on bonus payments for frontline healthcare workers, most of which are women.
- Both Myanmar and Bangladesh have added more than 20 million people to their social protection schemes.
While some countries were taking positive steps before COVID-19 ―South Korea boosted the minimum wage, Botswana, Costa Rica, and Thailand increased health spending and New Zealand launched a ‘well-being’ budget to tackle issues like child poverty and inequality, many countries had made little progress in the fight against inequality and some are going backwards. Many countries near the top of the index, such as Germany, Denmark, Norway, and the UK, have been back-tracking on policies that reduce inequality like progressive taxation for decades.
Women, who generally earn less, save less and hold insecure jobs, have been particularly hard hit by the lockdowns introduced in response to the pandemic while unpaid care work and gender-based violence have increased dramatically. Nearly half of the world’s countries do not have adequate legislation on sexual assault and 10 countries, including Singapore and Sierra Leone, have no laws on equal pay or gender discrimination.
Read the report: The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII).
Original source: Oxfam
